


Haven

by Dragonsquill (dragonsquill)



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: 5 Years Later, Angst, Future Fic, Humor, M/M, Nygmobblepot, Post Season 3, Slow Burn, talking things through, unfrozen Ed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 18:48:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11237034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsquill/pseuds/Dragonsquill
Summary: Rumors are spreading in Gotham that there is a place of rest and assistance for those in conflict with the Batman, known only as "Haven."  Protected under the umbrella of "legitimate businessman" Penguin, every serious villain in the city knows its whereabouts.  Or, well, almost every villain.  The Riddler isn't allowed in the Iceberg Lounge since he stopped being a centerpiece, much less in Haven.  But nearly five years after everything fell apart between them, the Riddler is determined to find his way in, even if he has to bother every villain in Gotham to do it...or go to even more extreme measures to have his questions answered.





	Haven

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leaper182](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leaper182/gifts).



> Much thanks to leaper182 for helping me with this and for dragging me into Nygmobblepot hell.

The first time the Riddler looks to solve the puzzle of Haven, he tries simply walking through the front entrance of the Iceberg Lounge. He isn’t dressed as the Riddler, of course; everyone would certainly recognize him not only for his recent television appearances, but also from his months as the club’s centerpiece. It’s been nearly five years since Jerome Valeska set him free, but that sort of humiliation lingers in the mind of your average club goer. Instead, he steals a fashionable black suit, adding only a tie in green and leaving his bowler behind at his latest hide-out.

He never even makes it through the door.

“You’re not allowed,” the impressive if rather sparkly and colorful female bouncer informs him, “as I’m sure you well know.”

“Madame!” the Riddler replies, placing a theatrical hand over his heart. “I cannot imagine why you would block an innocent, expensively-dressed passer-by from enjoying your fine establish-”

The woman doesn’t allow him to finish, cutting him off with a roll of navy-lined eyes and the presentation of a small black box with his name glowing neatly across an LED screen. “You’re Edward Nygma,” she says curtly, “and you’re not allowed inside the Iceberg Lounge.” 

The Riddler snarls and reaches for the switchblade in his right pocket, but she only grins in response. The tech looks like Wayne Enterprises’ work – whether it scanned for DNA or facial features he doesn’t immediately know. “Go ahead,” the Bouncer invites. “You pull a blade on me, _Mr._ Nygma, and I have permission written into my contract to slit your throat. All I’ll have to pay is the dry cleaning bill for my uniform.” She runs a hand over the shining blue vest, tugging it neatly into place.

The Riddler freezes – only figuratively this time, thank goodness. “No need to be hasty,” he says, letting the weapon slip from.his fingers and raising his gloved hands. He is never at his best in hand-to-hand combat, and she can surely call for assistance. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

“You can’t possibly pay me better than the Penguin,” she answers, “so don’t even try.”

She has a point. The Riddler is not a man without means, but certainly he doesn’t have the millions at his disposal that slide in and out of the Iceberg under the Penguin’s careful eye. The Penguin always has believed in well-paid muscle, while the Riddler has preferred to work on his own, without the inconvenience of directing underlings.

“Very well,” the Riddler says, bowing courteously. “Thank you for the warning, and I’ll be on my way.”

“Good,” the Bouncer replies, snapping her gum. “These are my favorite shoes, and blood is hell to get off the stiletto.”

\---------

The Riddler is not daunted. Impatience has never been a great vice of his, and he had learned, in those months after he believed he’d murdered his best friend, that he needs to have back-up plans. He simply institutes plan B.

The Greater Gotham Auction House has received, only two days before, a selection of diamond and sapphire necklaces from an “unknown” (but easily discovered, with the Riddler’s skills) and very down-on-her-luck client. Precious jewels in such a professionally and heavily guarded building always mean one thing:

The Catwoman will be coming.

The Riddler feels much more himself back in his trademark shining green, spinning his new cane in his hand as he waits inside the triple-locked room for the Cat’s arrival. He may not have her lithe grace and insistence on gymnastics routines, but he does have a mind that can break security codes, as well as a handy finger from one of the main guards, kept nice and warm for the fingerprint scanner. 

The Riddler balances his hat on his cane as he waits, flipping it carefully and very nearly landing it on his head. He gives himself a metaphorical pat on the back; his technique is steadily improving!

“Nygma.”

The Catwoman’s voice holds no warmth, but no real disdain either. She lands in front of him without so much as a soft thump, and he smiles winningly at her. It is so nice to see someone who finds him irritating, but doesn’t want to gut him for being in the room, as most of their compatriots wish to do. 

“Evening!” he chirps cheerfully, plucking up the fallen bowler and bowing low to the beautiful creature. “It’s been some time since last we met, my lady.”

“Doesn’t seem that long,” she shoots back, tapping one leather-clad toe on the tile. “What do you want from me?”

The Riddler’s eyes widen. “Perhaps I want the diamonds!” he says. “And here you’ve so thoughtlessly interrupted me with your latest Olympic floor routine!”

Catwoman sighs and crosses her arms, well used to his antics by now. They are the two greatest thieves in Gotham, after all, even if she is so very squeamish about “waste” of life. “You’re not interested in necklaces, Nygma, at least not this kind. What do you want?”

The Riddler grins, but inside he snarls. He hates being understood by those below him; and those below him involve all but two people in all of Gotham. “Very well.” He leans forward, twirling the sparkling string of sapphire and diamond on his right forefinger as he speaks. “I wish to make an offer.”

“I’m listening.”

“In return for these items, which I have rightfully stolen, I desire,” he pauses, taking a slow breath for dramatic effect and letting his voice dip even lower, “the location of Haven.”

The Cat laughs at him.

It isn’t a chuckle or a giggle, but full laughter, mocking, and the Riddler’s hand tightens on his cane as he fights the urge to slam it against her skull. She would only duck anyway. “Haven,” she says, leaning back against one of the display cases, confident that the alarms have been cut. “You think I’ll give you Haven for a couple of necklaces?”

The Riddler shrugs. “For the sapphires? Yes, I think you will. They are such a lovely shade of blue, aren’t they? Very reminiscent of a pair of eyes that peer oh-so-seriously at us all from behind his batty little mask.” He holds the necklace up, tilting it to catch in the light of the lamps he’s placed around the room for just this purpose, flickering like firelight.

Catwoman’s smile disappears. “You’re not as clever as you think you are,” she says shortly, “if you think making me angry will help your cause.”

The Riddler doesn’t bother to point out that it most likely will. The Cat is a prickly woman, motivated by a sense of challenge and curiosity, but also of emotion. He isn’t the only person in Gotham with his own pet theories about her relationship with their shared enemy. However, taking the time to explain other people’s foibles to them is tedious and generally not well-received. Instead, he only shrugs. “You want these expensive trinkets,” he says, “and I have them. That places me in the more powerful bargaining position.”

Catwoman prowls around him, eyes sharp and watchful. She doesn’t speak until she has circled him entirely. Then she tilts her head to the side, considering, and says, “No. Not worth it.”

The Riddler feels his smile drop. “It’s only an address!”

Catwoman’s expression is predatory. “Oh, Nygma. You know I have nothing against you personally, other than you are quite possibly the most annoying person I’ve ever met, but there’s nothing you can offer me that I would take for Haven.” She leans forward, her voice a purr. “Everyone who’s anyone in the undercity knows Haven’s number one rule: all freaks welcome here, except,” she waves a hand dismissively, “the Joker, and” she leans forward and taps his nose with one long nail, “the Riddler.” 

She takes clear delight in the Riddler’s disgruntled expression. “It must drive you absolutely mad,” she teases, “not knowing something so important to the rest of us. To be _excluded_ from a secret.” Her mouth twists into a smirk. “I’m not giving up the only place in Gotham safe from Batman because you still have ridiculous issues about Penguin, or because your delicate ego can’t stand a riddle you can’t solve.” She reaches up and pops the brim of his bowler. “I’m not married to the man, but he’s done me a good turn more than once, and in return, I keep his secrets.”

The Riddler’s lips draw back in a snarl, and his eyes narrow dangerously. “Fine,” he growls. “An additional offer: I will work with you to enter and rob the high security vault at the Wayne Enterprises dockside storage facility. You get my help getting your hands on their next shipment of silks _and_ the jewelry, in return for one little address.”

This time, the Cat doesn’t even take a moment to consider it, instead looking at him with such rich amusement that he automatically twists his cane, releasing the inner seal. 

She moves almost too quickly to be seen. The sound of the whip snaps in the air as it wraps around his hand hard enough to make the fingers go numb and send his cane clattering to the ground. It parts when it lands, the question mark sliding partially free to reveal the blade beneath. 

“Really, Riddler,” she says, twisting her wrist and making him grit his teeth against the pain that shoots up his arm, “stop stealing all your weapon ideas from the Penguin and get your own thing.”

He growls at her. “I bought him that first cane!” he snaps, remembering the day he gave it to the Penguin, then running for mayor of Gotham, and the man’s delight at the cleverly hidden blade. “Besides,” he adds, brooding, “he uses those ridiculous umbrellas now.”

“Bullet, fire, and cold-proof umbrellas,” she corrects, letting his wrist go with another small movement and rolling the whip back up, “courtesy of fellow interested parties who have used Haven.”

The Riddler can’t stop himself from rubbing the already raw skin of his wrist. “I’ve made you an offer you can’t refuse,” he says, forcing himself back to the topic at hand, though he wants to demand an explanation for the new freeze.proof feature of the Penguin’s umbrella. “Even you can’t crack Wayne Enterprises on your own.”

“This is true,” the Cat says easily, “but you are unreliable, obsessive, and given to theatrics above common sense. I can do without your sort of help.” She looks him up and down. “Face it, Riddler. No one is going to give you Haven and lose the best source of protection and information in the city. The Penguin’s help doesn’t come cheap, but it’s invaluable. Much more so than anything you have to offer.”

She holds her hand out.

The Riddler sighs but drops the necklace over her waiting fingers.

She’s right, he has no interest in so prosaic a piece.

\-------

The Cat’s words prove prophetic.

Similar attempts to barter goods or assistance for the location of Penguin’s mysterious Haven fail. Firefly and Freeze he expects to stand firmly on the Penguin’s side, but even outliers Grundy, Hellhound, and the Black Spider remain resolute in their refusal to lose the Penguin’s conditional support.

“This will not do,” The Riddler informs his mirror after the ridiculous Magpie turns him down despite the offer of three priceless Faberge eggs. “I need to _know_.”

His reflection nods back at him and adjusts its glasses. “Yes,” it agrees, “we do.”

\-------

Just before he froze the Riddler in ice, the Penguin informed him that “fortune favors the bold.” 

Haven is a place designed for the bold. Whispers around the city, combined with responses from his fellow rogues, claim that Haven is open to those important enough to be at odds with the Batman, though there is always a price for the offered medical care, shelter, and protection. Usually, the rumors claim, the Penguin accepts payment in the form of information, which only makes sense. Since he recreated himself as a “legitimate businessman” in control of one very successful club and a few real estate holdings, the Penguin has made his fortune by quietly being the best informed man in the city. Even the Riddler himself lacks the Penguin’s depth of knowledge concerning the city’s inner workings – in part because of the Penguin’s carefully curated largesse in the Haven and Riddler’s lack of access to the same.

There is a reason that Oswald Cobblepot is one of two people the Riddler considers his equal. 

“Or more,” says the well-dressed, calm, somewhat mild-mannered man in the Riddler’s mirror, adjusting the cuffs of the expensive shirt the Penguin gave him upon his only official release from Arkham, all those years ago. “It isn’t Oswald who spent ten months as a work of art.”

The Riddler concedes this point without admitting anything.

He doesn’t care to trust the whims of fortune. He is a believer in plans, carefully constructed and carried through to the proper ending. Logically, his methods should be superior to those dependent on luck, yet he struggles where the Penguin does not.

“Therefore,” the Riddler’s reflection tells him with a smile he hasn’t felt on his face in five long years, “it is time to be bold, and hope fortune favors us as well.”

He dresses carefully that evening, making sure every cufflink is clipped into place and there are no creases in his suit. His shoes are shined and his hair gelled into place. 

He leaves his hide-out with cane in hand and hat at a jaunty angle, pleased to have a final, perfect plan in mind.

\------

The gunshot wound is more painful than he had imagined.

Blood pours over his fingers, and he whimpers, curling over the hole so carefully placed in his abdomen. He had assumed there would be more shock than pain, but he learns immediately that he had miscalculated. 

There is _only_ pain.

He staggers forward, thankful that he is so close to his target. The atrium sprawls before him in the light of the sunset, warm and alive. He knows she’s there, and the crack of the gunshot brings her running, a gun in her hand and splashes of color against skin that looks green to his tear-filled eyes.

“Riddler,” Ivy snarls, pulling her gun up and pointing it directly at his heart. Oswald’s taught her to defend herself even without her growing control over plants. Of course he has; Oswald taught him once, long ago.

“Help me,” he gasps, tasting blood on his tongue. “Help-”

“I’ll help you die!” she cries recklessly, cocking the revolver and tossing back her mane of red hair.

He falls to his knees and the pain somehow spikes, though he wouldn’t have thought it possible. Beneath his hands, flesh and blood slither together. “West-”

She stares at him. “I can’t take _you_ to Dr. West!” she says forcefully. “He works for Ozzie!”

The name makes him warm for a moment. “Oswald,” he agrees, even as he slides gracelessly to the ground.

The gun lowers, and the last thing he hears is her muttered, “Shit,” as he sinks into unconsciousness.

\-----

He wakes in a familiar room, which is not at all what he expected.

The walls are papered in an old-fashioned damask, and the furniture is antique and well-loved but carefully maintained. He knows the fall of the light in this room – it was his, once, before he finally fled this house in the wake of murder and betrayal.

“Good evening.”

The voice is unfailingly polite, but when he turn his head and meets the familiar green eyes, they’re like glass, cold and remote. “Oswald,” he croaks, voice dry. 

The Penguin nods at him, leaning barely forward to offer him a cup of ice chips. “Obviously, given where you chose to go when you were injured.” He doesn’t waste any more words on pleasantries. “Why are you here?”

“I was shot,” he answers, shifting on the bed and sucking some of the chips in relief. He feels the pull of stitches in his stomach, and the numbness that comes from local anesthesia, but his mind is clear. 

“Yes. And you went to Ivy’s and demanded my doctor. Don’t play the innocent simpleton with me, _Riddler_ ,” the Penguin hisses dangerously, and that name, finally on those lips, makes the patient shiver despite the warm covers, “I know you.”

“Ed.”

The Penguin raises his eyebrows, questioning. 

“Ed. I’m not…I didn’t come as the Riddler,” Ed says. “I came as Edward Nygma.”

Because that is important. That…is bold. Even more bold than lurking outside the home of the Penguin’s closest friend and shooting himself in the stomach. 

The Penguin frowns at him, watching him for a long, silent moment before reaching into an inside pocket of his coat and pulling out a pair of glasses. He holds them out. 

“You were wearing these,” he says neutrally. 

Ed reaches for them gratefully. “Thank you,” he murmurs, putting them on. As the world clears around him, he takes the opportunity to study the man beside him. He looks…good. Older, perhaps, but not by much. He will always be a small man, and though access to good food and drink has filled him out a little, the exquisite cut of his suit reveals nothing. Despite sitting at the bedside of a sick man in his own home, the Penguin is dressed as formally as if he is hosting Gotham’s elite in his own bar. His eyes are lined with a steadier hand than they once were, and long, dark lashes brush his cheeks when he blinks. Ed sighs. He has missed that face more than he ever cared to admit. “That’s better.”

“I never have understood why you insist on not seeing properly since you became The Riddler,” the Penguin says. “You never cared for contacts.”

“I’ve learned to live with them,” Ed says, “but no, I still don’t like them.”

There is silence for a moment, utterly uncomfortable. Though of course, it would be. The last time they met, Ed tried to kill Oswald – again – and the Penguin had him frozen as a reminder of how dangerous love can be. 

Oswald breaks the silence, letting out a sigh. “What do you want, Ed? Is this about Haven? You thought I’d let Ivy take you there because you shot yourself?”

Ed looks up. “Shot myself?”

“Please, Ed,” Oswald says derisively, and Ed nods. Of course, it would be obvious to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of gunshot wounds and gunpowder residue. 

“I had considered she might take me to Haven,” Ed admits, “but that wasn’t my ultimate goal.”

Oswald shifts, his cane thumping once on the carpet as he does. “You will forgive me if I find that hard to believe given the number of members you’ve felt the need to interrogate over the last week.” 

“Of course,” Ed says, “and naturally the mystery of the Haven and how you’ve kept it so completely from my knowledge fascinates me. Seeing it would have been a significant bonus to my primary goal of seeing you.”

He’s caught Oswald off-guard. Most wouldn’t see it, not as the Penguin is now, but Ed knows him too well. He sees the softening around his eyes, the flutter of his lashes. “There are easier ways of seeing me.”

“Not without causing damage to your workers or your property,” Ed argues. “I tried to enter the lounge as both the Riddler and in disguise, but they identified me and turned me away. And your security system is designed to require destruction of the outer system in order to access the higher ones. Destroying your property didn’t seem like a good way to see you . . .” he searches for a word, so unused to interacting with people without the Riddler to hide behind, “socially.”

“And why,” Oswald asks silkily, danger in every syllable, “would the Riddler care to see me socially?”

“Ed,” Ed says. “Not the Riddler, Ed.”

Oswald throws one hand up in exasperation. “Despite your occasional insistence to the contrary, you’re the same person, Ed!”

“Yes,” Ed agrees quietly, “and no. The Riddler is a persona, a part of me, but not…not all of me, as I’ve tried to make him. The Riddler is convenient in carrying out my plans, and I have had a tendency, since I first named that version of myself, to try and live that persona all the time. But I am no more the Riddler than the man behind the mask is Batman, once the sun rises.”

Oswald stands, the sudden movement a sign of emotional agitation. He paces a few steps at the end of the bed and back again, his movements more graceful than the last time they shared so close a space. He has learned to use his cane properly now, a support on his good side, and surgery by one of the country’s finest orthopedists has turned his foot, even if the leg will never fully support his weight without discomfort. 

Ed, of course, knows all this because he made it his business to know. Perhaps he isn’t an expert computer hacker as of yet, but the medical profession still loves their paper copies. Getting his hands on Oswald’s had not been a great challenge. 

“Fine,” Oswald finally says, coming to a stop beside the bed and glaring down at Ed. “Setting your personal identity issues aside, _why_ do you want to meet _me_ ‘socially’? As I recall, I sent you a message after that maniac let you out and strung you up in the middle of the city saying that I would no longer attempt to capture you. _You_ made no such concession concerning your overwhelming urge to murder me!”

Ed looks down at his hands. “I…explained to you once, that I saw another version of myself. An hallucination of a darker me.”

“Yes,” Oswald says automatically, sitting down on the edge of the bed as if exhausted by the conversation. “And it went away when you accidentally killed Kristen Kringle.”

Ed felt a jolt of surprise at that – from the beginning, Oswald had always avoided using Kristen’s name. His mind, as always, longed to tumble down that rabbit hole, but he refused to let it, instead remaining focused on the issue at hand. “When I shot you, I began to see a new hallucination. It eventually went away, and I thought that meant that I had discovered what I needed in order to rid myself of emotion and become the Riddler.” 

Oswald is listening, but his expression is more wary and polite than truly interested. If Ed was the man who first met the Penguin in the GCPD, or even the one who delivered Mr. Leonard as a present, he would have backed down and apologized for wasting Oswald’s time.

But he isn’t that man anymore.

He is the Riddler, and he is Edward Nygma. He exists of himself and in himself.

“For the last year, I’ve had a new visitor.” Ed reaches out, almost touching Oswald’s hand. “And like the first, it’s me. Another me. But where before the Riddler drove me to murder until we were one, this time it’s only…it’s only me, pointing out what I’ve known and hidden from for years.”

“Which is?” Oswald asks, carefully neutral.

“That you were right,” Ed concedes, stomach twisting at the admission, “but you were wrong, too.”

Oswald pulls his hand away. “I’m in no mood for your riddles, Ed.”

“It isn’t a riddle!” Ed says in a rush, trying to keep Oswald there, to get him to listen. “You were right about creating me. You were right that killing you would change me. It killed a part of me that it’s taken years to find again. And you were right-“ He reaches again, grabbing Oswald’s hand in a grip the other man could easily break. “I did take the life of someone I love.”

Oswald’s breaths come one, two, three times, a harsh beat. “You have no right-”

“But you were wrong about our needing each other, Oswald. The Penguin exists without Ed Nygma. And the Riddler exists with Oswald Cobblepot. We are _able_ to exist without each other. But I don’t _want_ to.”

The difference . . . the difference is so important. He hopes, he believes, that Oswald will see that. He believes in it so strongly that he returned his injury to Oswald upon himself, on the off chance that the Penguin would see him because he was reckless and bold.

Oswald doesn’t pull away. “You made it very clear that you didn’t love me,” he says, and there’s a crack in his voice.

“I was trying to make it clear to myself,” Ed says, “because I thought you were right. I thought I _needed_ you, and I wanted to stand on my own.” He tightens his grip minutely. “But we were both right, Oswald. And both wrong. And I can’t seem to stop loving you, and I just . . .” he takes a breath, giving a little white lie, “want you to know that.”

Oswald stares at their hands. “And you expect me,” he says with bite, “to fall at your feet and love you all over again.”

“No,” Ed says truthfully. “I never want you to fall at my feet. I want to stand at your side. And I have no expectations at all about your feelings for me.” He shrugs, a little sheepishly. “I can predict so many things, Oswald, but I have never successfully predicted you.”

Oswald turns their hands, traces the shape of Ed’s fingers beneath his own. He doesn’t answer.

“A man I love once told me,” Ed tries, “that life only gives you one chance at true love, and you have to run toward it.”

Oswald snorts softly. “My mother never said you should shoot yourself for it.”

Ed lifts his chin proudly. “You’re worth it,” he says, then winces. “But it hurts….a lot.”

The pale fingers close around his. Oswald has taken to wearing polish, a deep, shifting purple. It suits him. “That’s one way to describe it,” he says. Then, he takes a slow breath. “I’m sorry I had her killed,” he said, “or at least for the reason”

Ed nods slowly. “I’m sorry about your father’s remains,” he answers. “I…did return them.”

“I know.”

Their fingers slot easily together. There is no strange giddiness at the movement, as there had been the first time Ed’s hands touched Kristen’s, or the sense of twisted disbelief from Isabella. He doesn’t feel tongue-tied or awkward. He isn’t praying that no dark voice will whisper in his ear. If it comes, Oswald won’t be afraid of it.

“You taught me that love is about sacrifice,” Oswald says, and he holds his free hand up when Ed tries to open his mouth and argue that he certainly never forfeited anything for love, having murdered his first and offered no sacrifice to the second. “If, and I can make no promises, we are able to find that connection again, I will sacrifice my need to have you to myself. I will not allow jealousy to keep you from who you are or from anyone you should meet.” 

“I don’t want anyone but you,” Ed protests, but Oswald shakes his head. 

“I may not be what you expect,” he says, and there is a hint of the old gentleness there, and sadness that seems deeper rooted even than their rivalry. “And we may have changed too much for there to be anything here. But I promise you, I will not try to keep you here against your will, or allow my jealousy to cause you pain.”

Ed stares at him. “But…you shouldn’t have to sacrifice while I only gain.”

Oswald smiles at him. It’s the smile from the docks, the smile of a man who loves a man he knows all too well, and can only hope that events will end differently than he expects. He hasn’t said the words, but that smile tells Ed what he needs to know about Oswald’s steadfast feelings over these terrible, exhilarating years. “Oh, you will make your own concession,” he assures Ed.

 

Ed licks his lips nervously. “And that is?”

Oswald meets his gaze directly. “You will not ask me about Haven. You won’t search for it, make threats to find it, or attempt in any way to trace it. You won’t ask me who’s there, or what I learn from them.” Ed feels his stomach drop. “That isn’t to say I won’t tell you at times, but you can’t ask, Ed. Haven is to be kept separate from this.” He motions between them. 

_I know you, Ed,_ Oswald told him at the docks, and he does. He knows how to extract the greatest sacrifice possible in return for a chance at something Ed once threw away: truth, and curiosity.

Ed closes his eyes. He thinks of blood coursing over Oswald’s fingers. He thinks of Isabella, too perfect and not real, dead and burnt. He thinks of the morning on the day he missed that special dinner, of Oswald’s shy attempts at putting the thing between them into words, and his own brusque refusal to see it. 

_Is it worth it?_ he asks himself, and then he opens his eyes.

There is Oswald, patiently waiting, his eyes too-bright just as they were _both_ days at the docks, whether Oswald was begging for life and love or the Penguin was waiting to be proven wrong.

“Yes,” he says, holding out a hand. “Agreed.”

But Oswald doesn’t take his hand. He reaches out and pulls Ed close, broad hands flat against Ed’s back. Ed freezes for only a moment before making a sound that could be a sob and bringing his own hands up, burying his eyes against the exquisite fabric covering Oswald’s shoulder. 

“Oswald,” he whispers, holding on, letting himself feel everything he did the first time, the taste of ginger on his tongue and the crackle of the fire in his ears. It has been so long since the mask slipped, and longer still since someone held him with genuine care.

Oswald rubs his back, and the Riddler doesn’t deserve it, after all he’s done, but the Penguin whispers, “I’m here, Ed. I’m here.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for the pairing, but I'm loving and reading fics and you're all amazing!


End file.
